4/5 ★ – PaperSpock's review of Steins;Gate.

I liked this game quite a bit, but it exists in a place where it does a lot wrong...but much of the stuff that it does wrong has a strong tie to some things it does right. There are movies like The Breakfast Club and Casablanca that weren't made as period pieces at the time, but retroactively become one because of just how much they captured a certain time and place. Steins;Gate is like this, but for late 00s Japan. It's an era where everyone has a phone with them, but it's a flip phone. Cell phones are something that is commonplace, but *new* to being commonplace. It's a time that people were on message boards saying things like "for realz??" to each other online and had a way of relating to the internet in a way that now feels a bit quaint. I really enjoyed how it took me back to that time frame in those sorts of ways. And yet, in being a product of the time, there's some really gross sexism and general creepiness from some of the characters; one very much in particular, but a bit from some others too. They include a trans character and paint her in a positive light, but ultimately handle her in a way that was disappointing (not to mention that they use language to describe this character that is now more widely understood to be offensive). The first half of the game was an extremely slow burn, establishing character and mysteries, teasing the idea of time travel and introducing it in more and more substantial ways, until it builds to an extremely explosive, perhaps even nuclear, moment halfway through the game. It becomes a high octane thriller for a while....and then just of falls off a cliff in intensity and goes in circles for a little bit. It eventually builds back up again to some pretty high highs, but they're overshadowed by just how explosive the middle felt. The method of interactivity is extremely cool in theory, but the execution is mostly poor. Basically, instead of having dialogue choice style conversations while talking to people, you get texts and phone calls that you can choose to attend to, or not. But their impact is *mostly* limited to other texts....except for some cool scenes that lead to the true ending. But because there are limited instances of your texting impacting the actual narrative, and the "correct" answer is not at all clear, you'll most likely end up having to consult a guide to get the best ending. I think I would have loved this interactivity if it felt a bit more interactive, and would love to see a smoother implementation of it, but here, it fell flat despite being a fascinating idea. I want to be clear that there was a lot I really liked outside of the above, but I have a lot less to say about those; the music was effective, the art gorgeous, and the scifi elements, twists, and reveals a lot of fun. So I did really enjoy my time with this game and am excited to try the follow up. But the fact that there were several elements that I was quite mixed on remains and holds the game back from a higher rating.